Book Review: The Journey to Enterprise Agility
This book, The Journey to Enterprise Agility, was given to me as part of my registration package for The Path to Agility conference in Columbus, Ohio. The books subtitle is 'Systems Thinking and Organizational Legacy' and at least the system thinking part is pervasive throughout the entire work.
I loved this book. I enjoyed the writing and the easy-to-read layout, but most of all I really enjoyed, and mostly agreed with, the content! In some ways the book is a bit of a guidebook for many facets of IT, particularly surrounding the management of software development. The authors, Daryl Kulak and Hong Li, are clearly fans of systems thinking and spend much time discussing the interactions within IT departments as well as interactions between the business and IT. The book is less about how to 'do' IT, and more about the overall system.
The other focus of the book is agility. I am a firm believer in agile, but I'm also a believer, as are Kulak and Li, that processes should not take priority over getting a job done. That includes 'agile' processes. The authors correctly point out that agile methodologies should not be sacrosanct, and that the goal is not to be the most pure 'agilists' we can be, but to deliver relevant and secure product as quickly as possible, and with the most business value.
There's much more to the book, and I highly recommend checking this out for yourself.
I loved this book. I enjoyed the writing and the easy-to-read layout, but most of all I really enjoyed, and mostly agreed with, the content! In some ways the book is a bit of a guidebook for many facets of IT, particularly surrounding the management of software development. The authors, Daryl Kulak and Hong Li, are clearly fans of systems thinking and spend much time discussing the interactions within IT departments as well as interactions between the business and IT. The book is less about how to 'do' IT, and more about the overall system.
The other focus of the book is agility. I am a firm believer in agile, but I'm also a believer, as are Kulak and Li, that processes should not take priority over getting a job done. That includes 'agile' processes. The authors correctly point out that agile methodologies should not be sacrosanct, and that the goal is not to be the most pure 'agilists' we can be, but to deliver relevant and secure product as quickly as possible, and with the most business value.
There's much more to the book, and I highly recommend checking this out for yourself.
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